


Sleepwalkers

by SpookySad



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: "Friends" with benefits, Ableist Language, Animal Abuse, Apartment Living, Bad Landlords, Blackmail, Coffee, Cult Leader!Tyler, Cults, Death, Diurnal Mistakes, Duct Tape, F/F, F/M, Good Vietnamese Names for Cats, Graphic Violence, Gratuitous Liberties Taken by the Author, Horror, Josh Knows Nothing, Laundry, M/M, Mistakes, Murder, Nocturnal Mistakes, Non-Consensual Porn, Succulents, Suicide, Surveilance, The Red Beanie, Tyler Knows All, Tyler Sees All
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2019-03-01
Packaged: 2019-09-23 06:28:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17075126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpookySad/pseuds/SpookySad
Summary: Josh likes his new apartment building, except for the night-time cult being run by the cutie at the end of the hall.(WIP)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Read those warnings. Read them again. Proceed with caution. Keep in mind this is fiction in every and all ways.

It’s Saturday night when Josh opens the door to his apartment and finds three inches of water pooling on the sagging linoleum of his kitchen floor. The faucet sink is barely turned on, the thinnest line of water dripped into the overflowing basin, thin as spiderweb silk. He takes a nice long moment to hate his fucking life before tip-toeing to the sink and banging his fist on the lever, stopping the flow. When he opens the cabinets under the sink, a torrent of water and Ramen packages flood out, soaking his sneakers and socks.

He calls the guy who does maintenance and repairs for the apartment building but gets no answer (figures). After pacing around in his squeaking tennis shoes and soaking every last paper towel-beach towel-dish towel- _washcloth_ trying to clean up the mess, Josh gives in and calls his landlord.

His landlord is middle-aged and loud-mouthed. On the first of the month, he sends his wife around to all the apartments to collect the rent. She doesn’t speak a word more of English than she needs to write out receipts on scraps of notebook paper. She spells his name as Josh Dune, possibly out of spite.

His landlord takes one look at the kitchen floor and fists a hand in his thinning hair, pulling on strands he can’t afford to lose.

“Shit on toast,” he says. He pulls out his phone and starts jabbing at the touch screen. “What the fuck did you do, Dune?”

“Dun,” Josh mutters.

“Done? Done with _what_?”

“Nothing,” Josh sighs. _Everything_ , he thinks.

The landlord plants himself in Josh’s recliner while they wait for someone to come and fix the burst pipe. When the man asks Josh if he has anything to eat, Josh nearly throws one of the sopping packages of Ramen at the back of his pointed head. He thinks twice. Apartments in Columbus aren’t cheap. Instead, he takes a box of half eaten Ritz crackers from on top of his refrigerator and drops them on the coffee table. Hopefully they’re expired. Hopefully the asshole chokes on them.

Josh soaks up what water he can, but the linoleum in the kitchen is bubbling upward like the crust on a pizza. He is bouncing on one of the largest bubbles, shoes squeaking, when the door to his apartment opens and the landlord’s wife enters. She’s wearing a t-shirt and sleep shorts, a toolbox in one thin hand. She puts back her hair with a tie from her wrist and kneels under Josh’s sink, unshaved legs poking out behind her.

The landlord’s phone rings and he steps out into the hall to take the call. Passing him on the way in is Debby carrying her overnight bag. She takes in Josh’s slumped figure on the sofa and the unshaved legs under his kitchen before sitting next to him. She smells like his body wash from using his shower earlier that morning.

Debby reaches out and grabs the crackers off of the coffee table. He accepts one when she offers.

“Rough night?” she asks.

“Basically, I’m fucked,” Josh says around a mouthful of crumbs.

The landlord comes back in, redness having crept from his cheeks outward until his entire face is a maroon showing of cinematic fury. He points a finger at Josh. “Your goddamn leak is coming in through the ceiling of the apartment underneath you. Pack your fucking bags, Dune.”

Debby snorts, delicately biting one stale cracker. “You’re fucked.”

#

Josh’s sneakers are still wet when the sun rises to find him standing in the parking lot of Debby’s apartment complex, hands shoved deep into his pockets to protect his dry knuckles from stinging in the cold.

“I could stay with you for a while,” Josh had suggested while they packed up the essentials from his apartment. He ducked behind his mattress to avoid seeing the inevitable expression on her face.

“Isn’t moving in together something that _couples_ do?” she asked flatly, refolding the shirts that he had tossed into his suitcase. He was glad that she couldn’t see his face go red. He thought about trying to explain that it could just be as friends, could be just until he got on his feet again, but his pride ached.

“Yeah, you’re right,” Josh mumbled instead, finding a pair of her underwear under his bed. He stuffed them in his bag while Debby’s back was turned. He didn’t want to leave them behind, and Debby didn’t need to know that he still had them.

She helped him pack up what they could, filling the trunk and backseat of her car with suitcases and trash bags, plastic groceries sacks and laundry baskets. He held a box of the food from his refrigerator on his lap in the passenger seat, hardly believing that everything that meant anything to him could fit into the inside of a tiny Toyota Corolla that smelled like pumpkin spice and cinnamon gum.

Pinecrest Apartments is a three-building, dozen level complex situated in one of the nicer parts of Columbus. It doesn’t look much like its name: industrial brick and flattop roofs. Upper apartments have balconies that look out into the parking lot. While Josh is waiting for Debby to drop her bag off at her apartment and let him into the lobby of the middle complex, he sees two women smoking on adjacent balconies the next building over. One in a Led Zeppelin t-shirt and her sweatpants tucked into her UGG boots tosses a lighter to the blonde on the other balcony. When they catch Josh watching them, he waves. Led Zeppelin flips him off.

“Cool,” he mutters, hoping the cold masks his blush. He shoves his hands back into his pockets, wondering what in the fuck was taking Debby so long and why he couldn’t have just come inside with her. “Cool, cool.”

“ _Joshua_!” Debby has her head sticking out of the lobby’s doors. Sometime upstairs, she had changed from her comfortable clothes into her Starbuck’s uniform. As he brushes past her into the warmth of the building, he sees the circles under her eyes.

“When’s your shift start?”

“Twenty minutes ago. Don’t give me that look, I offered to help you out, and I’m going to leave you my car so that you can unpack your shit. I called Mr. Jefferson. He said he’d meet you here about the apartment. He’s a serious stickler for the rules and will probably bitch up a storm about me leaving you in the apartment lobby unsupervised, but just grin and bear it—unless you’d like to be sleeping at the bus stop.” She presses a kiss to his cheek, and is it his imagination, or does she linger there, soft skin pressed against his unshaved face? She smells hot like her cinnamon gum which she snaps in his ear before disappearing in a flurry of brisk air.

Once she’s gone, Josh hovers awkwardly in lobby. It’s a warm room in many ways, with old hardwood floors that creak under his careful steps and a couple of large, plush armchairs. On the wall is a trio of artsy pictures of forests taken from above the treeline. Black and white. Nice.

The lobby door opens and in comes an old man with the cold air. He’s bowed with age, a knitted scarf pulled up around his mouth and nose. He tugs off his fingerless gloves and lowers the scarf to reveal an aged face and shrewd, blue eyes. His voice is strong and no nonsense when he says Josh’s name.

“That’s me,” Josh says weakly.

“Are you going to bullshit me?”

Josh blinks. He’s sweating. God, he hates meeting people. “What?”

“Are you deaf and dumb? I’m asking if you’re a bullshitter, because I don’t rent apartments to druggies, hookers, and bullshitters.” He counts them off on his fingers. “You can try the Budget Motel up north. Tell me: whose fault it is that your apartment flooded?”

“Mine,” Josh admits half-heartedly, trying not to look or sound like a drug addict, hooker, or bullshitter. He shifts on his feet, unsure if he’s succeeding. “I must have left the sink on before I left for work.”

“These apartments are sixty years old. Are you going to leave the water on again and flood the business my grandfather built?”

“No, sir.”

The old man sticks out a hand. It’s dry and warm. “Then I think we’re probably going to get along just fine.”

#

First, he shows Josh the apartment 6B. It’s a one bedroom on the second floor with a combined kitchen-living area. It’s clean, there are appliances built in, and he’s willing to bet that the smoke detectors have batteries—working ones.

“Do you have furniture, son?”

“Some,” Josh admits. “But I brought a sleeping bag and my phone charger until I can get it hauled here.”

“Bed bugs?”

“No, sir.”

“Good. Five hundred for the deposit, five hundred for rent. Rent’s due the first of the month, no exceptions, no excuses. If you’re late, I’ll just slap an eviction notice on you quicker than you can blink. They’re getting to know me really well down at the courthouse, you understand?”

Josh nods.

The old man points to the west wall. “You share a wall with Debby in 8. 4, on your other side, is a Vietnam veteran who goes to bed at six sharp every night, so no rock n’ roll, no loud sex, no moving furniture, none of that past six. Understood? Good. Good.”

When they exit the apartment, the door of the apartment next door is cracked open and 4 is peaking out, just as old as Mr. Jefferson only even shorter. A slick brown American shorthair slinks out into the hallway, pink nose twitching as it watches them with apple colored eyes. The old landlord turns and points at Josh’s chest. “No pets allowed, unless it’s a service animal. Do you have a service animal?”

“No.”

Mr. Jefferson gives a greeting that 4B barely acknowledges, shutting the door.

“PTSD,” whispers the landlord as they go down the stairs, taking each step slowly and one at a time. “ _Not_ that it’s any of your business. Are you a gossipmonger? Hmm.”

At the end of the hallway and at the top of the stairs is a little window that looks out into the parking lot: three industrial sized dumpsters that stand in a row like sentinels. Trash is picked up every Wednesday, and Josh is free to throw in as many bags as he likes, but no loose garbage and no furniture. They reach the lobby again and the old man points to another door, next to the photographs of the woods. “Laundry room is down there, no extra charge. The steps are steep and I’m not going to risk breaking my neck showing it to you. You’re free to use them any time, day or night. No noise is going to get through the concrete down there. Clean the lint trap, provide your own soap when you can, and don’t leave things sitting around because I’m not responsible for them.”

“That’s fair,” Josh says.

“You’ll find that we’re very fair here,” the old man says. His face softens, but it could just be Josh’s wishful thinking. “I’m not going to rip you off, and I’m not going to poke my nose into your business. Mind the rules around here and mind the other tenants, and we’ll get along fine. Now let’s settle the rent and sign some paperwork.”

The old man uses real receipt paper, the kind that makes two copies for half the work. Josh hands over a thousand dollars: every last penny that he’s managed to save, plus a little extra that Debby lent him on the promise that he’ll pay her back with interest. Mr. Jefferson hands over a set of keys, and Josh becomes 6B.

#

After three trips up and down the stairs, Josh is sweating underneath his winter jacket. He still isn’t used to the key yet, and on his fourth trip (with a box of DVD’s under his arm and plastic sacks of toiletries dangling from his arms like bracelets), he can’t unlock the lobby door. He is just about to sit all of his shit down to free both of his hands when the door opens and a man is standing there.

Brown, dazed eyes surrounded by dark lashes grow wide at the sight of him. He’s dressed in a black button-down winter coat with a vivid red beanie slipping too low on his forehead. Josh is so shocked at the sudden appearance that he drops the DVD’s and they scatter on the concrete steps.

“Oh, wow,” the man says, voice rough as if he has just woken. “You totally crept up on me.”

“Sorry,” Josh says, though he’s pretty sure it’s the other way around.

“No hard feelings. 6B, right?”

“That’s me.”

“11B. Across the hall and all the way at the end. If you walk out onto the fire escape, you’ve gone too far. Probably.”

They both bend down and start piling DVD’s back into the box. Josh suddenly blinks. “Hey—I know you!”

“You do?” 11B sounds mildly excited. He reaches up to push his slipping hat further up on his forehead so that he can see.

“Yeah, at the Halloween party. My friend Debby brought me. It was on the roof, remember? Fucking freezing.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t the basement?” 11B asks.

“I could see the stars.”

“So, you’re sure?”

“Well, yeah.”

11B fixes him with a stare that is almost too serious to be polite. He rubs at his forehead, knuckles disappearing under the red beanie. Josh busies himself with turning the DVDs all on their sides to make room in the box, but his eyes don’t see the titles and his fingers slip over the slick covers uselessly. At last the other man says: “You know, I think I remember you too.”

They both stand.

“I’m Josh,” says Josh.

“Tyler. Look, I’m late for something, so I’d better get going.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“I’ve got to buy some succulents.”

“Cool.”

“By succulents, I mean duct tape.”

“O- _kay_?”

Tyler smiles, and Josh has the feeling that he’s being made fun of. Tyler is so good looking that he doesn’t even mind. Reaching up, 11B pulls his beanie low over his eyebrows and heads out into the cold, walking off towards the main street without stopping in the parking lot. Josh watches until he disappears between two of the apartment buildings.

“Ex-cuse me.” A girl brushes past Josh, some indiscernible but obviously a pain-in-the-ass age. She smells like too much cotton candy perfume. “You’re letting all the cold air in, ya know.”

Josh gathers his bags, balances the box on his hip, and steps inside.

#

He spends the rest of the morning pushing bags and grocery sacks into their approximate rooms. His phone is dead, so he unplugs the toaster on the kitchen countertop to plug his charger in, making a sandwich while he waits for it to turn on. Then he calls U-Haul to reserve a truck. They’re cheap, but not cheap enough. He’ll probably have to borrow more money from Debby until his payday on Friday, but all in all, he feels hopeful. Josh’s mother used to say that when a door closes, a window opens. Thank God Josh is skinny and short enough to fit in through the window.

Someone knocks on his door in a jaunty rhythm. When he looks through the keyhole, he just sees the empty distorted hallway. Cracking the door open, one large brown eye is peering at him as Tyler leans against the frame.

“Jesus!” Josh says, voice muffled by peanut butter and bread. He steps backwards on instinct and Tyler nudges the door open with a finger though he doesn’t step inside. Under one arm is a paper grocery bag. The other man’s nose is red from the cold. He pushes his beanie up out of his eyes.

“Hey,” Tyler says mildly, lifting one hand in a lackluster wave. “I was kind of rude before. I thought I’d apologize.”

“No way,” Josh says, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth in case there is any peanut butter left over. “You weren’t rude at all. Honestly.”

Tyler smiles. “Can I come in? I brought you a housewarming gift. Well, apartment-warming. You know what I mean.”

Josh is touched. He’s been here for less than a day and already feels more warmly welcomed than he did in the last six months at his old apartments. The other man doesn’t even seem to mind that there’s no furniture, choosing to sit cross-legged on the floor. It emphasizes his long, skinny legs and the faded knees on his black jeans. Tyler shoves his entire arm into the paper bag (reminding Josh a little of Mary Poppin’s purse) and pulls out a tiny looking plant in a colorful vase.

“Ta-da!” He says, waving one hand around the plant like one of those girls on the Price is Right.

“You got me a cactus!”

“It’s a succulent! I _told_ you! And, wait, wait for this, you’re going to love this—” He goes into the bag with his free hand and removes—”Duct tape! But honestly, if you don’t need the duct tape, I’d prefer to keep it. _If_ that’s okay with you.”

“Uh—yeah, dude. It’s all yours. Thank you, though. That’s like, so thoughtful.”

Tyler suddenly blinks, glancing around the apartment as if waking from a dream and finally noticing his surroundings. “Where’s all your stuff? Were you burglarized already?”

Josh laughs and uses his hands to pull himself up onto the kitchen island. His feet dangle, revealing how short he is, but there’s nothing in Tyler’s face that hints at him being sized up. “No, nothing like that. All my furniture is still at my old place. I’m going to rent one of those trucks to pick it up this week.”

He finds himself telling Tyler the whole story—about his parents moving down to Florida to spend their golden years sipping margaritas and tanning all of their wrinkles, about having to find his own place and settling for the first (“the _worst_!”) place he could find in his budget, and leaving the sink on only to flood his kitchen and destroy his apartment. “I don’t even remember using the sink that morning,” Josh says. “But I don’t even mind to be honest. It was fate, I guess.”

Tyler is a good listener, with an expressive face and all the right interjections. He asks questions, and Josh is sure that he’s never met a more earnest person in his life. A sort of warm lull comes over him, like sometimes after he and Debby make love when she runs her fingers through his hair. There’s something about Tyler makes him seem genuine, like he really cares to know more about him.

They talk until Debby’s shift ends. She comes into Josh’s apartment without knocking, Chinese under one arm and two Starbuck’s cups sitting across from each other in a drink carrier. She stops in her tracks at the sight of the two of them, now sitting with their backs against the kitchen island, drinking the diet cokes which were all Josh had in his refrigerator. Her face changes, open expression becoming something politely empty: a face she usually reserves for customers at work or when Josh talks about _relationships_.

“Am I interrupting?” She asks, sounding like she already knows. “I brought dinner. That chicken stuff you like.”

“You’re fine,” Josh says. “And that sounds great.”

“Tyler,” Debby greets. “I only brought dinner for two.”

Tyler is grinning, beanie low to cast a shadow on his eyes. He shrugs. “That’s fine, I’m vegetarian anyway. More environmentally sustainable.” He stands up and moves Josh’s succulent off of the floor and onto the kitchen countertop. Just like Debby, his expression is suddenly not as open. If they hadn’t spent the last few hours talking about anything under the sun, Josh might have believed that they were just strangers passing in the hallway. “See you around. Josh. Deborah. A` tout a` l'heure!”

Debby closes the door so gently behind him that Josh can barely hear it click shut from across the room. She leans in and presses her eye to the peephole.

“ _Deb-or-ah_ ,” Josh says, laughing. He puts his empty coke can in the sink. “What was that he said? Toodle-loo?”

“What was he doing here?” Debby asks. She puts the Chinese on the counter, picking up the succulent to turn it this way and that.

“He ran into me when I was unpacking and stopped by to give me that. Sort of a welcome-to-the-apartment gift. What, you don’t like him?” Josh isn’t sure why the thought doesn’t bother him much. Debby is the most important person in his life (pretty much his only friend, and sometimes his lover, though she’d deny it if she ever heard Josh use that term and probably punish him by not texting back for the next two weeks. Or something.); up until now, he’s preferred to have her approval for most things.

Debby shrugs, handing him chopsticks and taking a plastic fork for herself. “He seems nice enough. I just always get the feeling he’s making fun of me. I don’t know. Kind of a weirdo.”

“I see your point,” Josh says mildly. He holds up the duct tape. “He brought this over, too.”

They laugh.  

#

That night, Josh rolls out his sleeping bag in the small room that will be his bedroom. There’s one window that overlooks the main road, but luckily this part of Columbus doesn’t have a lot of bright night life to keep him up. He sort of likes the dim orange glow from the streetlamp that comes in.

Laying on the floor feels like camping. Though he’s twenty-two years old, he still feels a little afraid of the dark, a little anxious about the first night in a new place. He wishes that Debby had offered to let him come back to her place for tonight. He could have slept on the couch. Or maybe in her bed.

Debby. He rolls over in the sleeping bag, the obnoxious crinkling of the nylon filling the room. He presses his palm against the west wall that separates their apartments and then knocks three times. There’s no reply. After a while, he rolls back over and falls asleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is cult fluff i think

Debby gets called in for a shift, but there is frozen rain all day anyway. Josh calls U-Haul to reschedule (the only thing more miserable than moving is moving in the rain) and gets told that they don’t have any trucks available in the size he needs. He’ll have to wait until Friday, but they’ll give him a discount, which he figures is worth roughing it for a few days without furniture. With nothing else to do, he grabs one of the laundry baskets filled with clothes that have smelled better days and lugs it down to the basement.

The stairs leading down are wooden, creaking under his weight. The room itself is brightly lit once he flips the switch. Along one wall are half a dozen washers and dryers and in the corner sits a larger industrial dryer that is purring a low rumble as it churns its contents. Benches for folding are scattered like pews in a church. The floors and walls are unfinished concrete, but it’s clean, and at his last place he’d had to feed quarters into machines for every half-hour of usage. Here it’s _free_ and there’s even a closet filled with generic laundry soap that he can help himself to if he needs.

Josh shoves a basket full of his clothes into one vacant washer without sorting colors and lights, because fuck it. While he waits, he does Sudoku puzzles on his phone and sometimes stares vacantly out the tiny rectangular window that looks out into the gravel of the parking lot. It starts to rain again, distorting his view.

He’s just switching his clothes into the dryer when the door to the basement opens and there is a heavy creaking of steps. It’s a young woman with a swollen, pregnant stomach. Josh isn’t familiar with womanly things, but she looks dangerously close to being due (and that’s without mentioning her heavy breaths as she lugs two large canvas bags full of laundry down, one slung over each shoulder). Scared that he’ll witness a death on his second day at the apartment, he rushes to meet her halfway and takes the bags from her. One hand goes to her stomach and the other goes to the railing as she breathes a sigh of relief.

“Thank you,” she says as Josh helps her load one of the washers. She sits slowly on a nearby bench, wincing like even resting is painful. Her hair is unwashed under her tie-dye bandana, stringy and dark against her pale face. “I really appreciate it. A lot of people here probably would have just sat and watched me suffer.”

“Really?” Josh says. “Everyone seems so nice.”

She hums, smiling tiredly. “You’re new, aren’t you?”

“6B,” he says.

“12D. Nice to meet you.”

They make polite conversation. She shows Josh the proper way to fold his shirts to minimize wrinkles (not that he cares, but still. Maybe someday he’ll care). She has a nice way of teaching that doesn’t make him feel stupid, and she takes the _time_ to teach him which is more than Debby ever has. Even after his clothes are folded and nestled in his laundry basket, Josh sits with her to help her with her own and carries the canvas bags up the five flights of stairs to her apartment.

Her door isn’t locked. “Can you put it just inside, here?”

Josh tentatively enters the apartment. There is the smell and then there is the mess. The smell is of a strong, lemon scented cleaner, the kind his mother used to use when Josh was a child. The mess is not so much chaos as it is organized clutter. Every drawer in the kitchen has been removed, the contents piled neatly on the counter: mounds of glittering spoons and knives and can openers. The refrigerator is pulled away from the wall, the couch cushions are stacked neatly in the corner. DVDs are scattered across the floor in piles, empty boxes and a tower of discs. On the upended coffee table, someone is taking apart the stereo system.

“Right there, Josh,” she says, pointing beside the television which is unplugged and dark. He places the canvas bags carefully, tiptoeing over a lamp and its removed lampshade. The place gives him the fucking creeps, but there’s an instinctual part of him that knows not to let on how unsettled he is. Self-preservation urges him to pretend that this is normal. She speaks again, but Josh barely hears it: “Thanks. I really appreciate your help.”

“No problem,” Josh says, sweating. Jesus, he’s overreacting. What could a fucking pregnant woman do to him? “Anytime. You—you know where I live.”

Her smile is breezy and pitying, like she can sense how uncomfortable that idea makes him. “Yeah. If I need a knight in shining armor, I know where to go.”

She pulls a magnetized notepad off of the refrigerator, detaching the pen from the side and begins to write. “Here’s a little something as a thanks. No, no, you deserve it. You’re a really nice guy. Bye, Josh.” She tears the paper free, folds it in half, and tucks it into his hand before he can refuse whatever she is offering him. Without another word, the door closes in his face.

In the hall, he opens the paper and reads her thanks, written as **MOVE OUT**.

Below that, in smaller letters _: Burn this_.

#

The next time Josh sees Tyler, it’s at the New Year’s Eve party. December in Columbus is too cold to be on the roof, so the party is held in the basement. The benches have been pushed to the side and someone has strung old-fashioned bulb lights across the room. Outside it is snowing, the tiny basement window too frosted over to see out. Someone has their iPod set up playing 90’s music, and Josh is (badly) singing along to a Wallflowers song when Tyler finds him.

Tyler thrusts out a warm, dry hand.

“I’m Tyler,” he says.

“I know,” Josh says. “We met a few weeks ago. I bumped in to you, remember?”

“We were on the roof, right?” Tyler asks.

“ _No_ -o.” Josh shifts his drink from one hand to the other and wipes his sweaty palm on his jeans. Dark eyes track his movements, and Tyler lifts his own drink, squinting at Josh. He can’t tell what the other man’s expression means, whether it’s because Josh isn’t good at picking up the subtleties there or because Tyler’s face is well guarded. “That was the Halloween party, remember? We met, dude, it was like—just last week, or two weeks, or—”

Tyler’s eyes light up with recognition. He points a finger. “You still have my duct tape.”

“Yes!”

“I’m going to need that back. I’ve really been in a pickle without it—you wouldn’t believe.”

“I used some of it, I hope that’s okay—”

“What for?”

“I don’t remember, _some_ thing fucking broke—”

“Well, that’s all right I suppose. Look, there are four dark corners in this room, and at least two of them are empty. Do you want to go to separate ones and brood and stare at each other all night?”

“Brooding? Who is brooding?” Josh asks. “I’m not brooding.”

“You are,” Tyler says. He shifts to touch shoulders with Josh, both of their backs pressed against the cement-block wall. They stare out at the people milling around the basement, making conversation. Josh doesn’t see 12D and wonders if she’s had her baby yet. He thinks about the note she gave him, **MOVE OUT** _, burn this_. For the life of him, he can’t remember what he did with it. Not burn it, that’s for sure. “She’s over there, by the pretzels.”

Josh looks but can’t see her. Wait—”Who are you talking about?”

“Debby. You’re looking for her, aren’t you? She’s over there. I think she’s stress eating; she keeps looking over here at you. Did you two come together?”

“No,” Josh says. “Well, yes, we walked down here together but—no, we aren’t _together_ -together. You know.”

“You’re just sleeping together,” Tyler says. He takes Josh cup from his hand and lifts it to his mouth taking a generous sip. Josh’s eyes track his movements, zero-in on the place where the cup and his lips touch. He accepts the cup back and immediately takes a sip himself from the same spot. Tyler is watching him, and his face feels hot. Tyler grins: “I spit in that, you know. What do I taste like?”

Choking on his drink, his sinuses burn with vodka and orange juice. Tyler pats him on the back, but it seems to make Josh’s keen embarrassment worse. His face is on the verge of spontaneously combusting. “Did you really?”

“Did he what?”

Debby is there. Clutched in one hand is a napkin wrapped up full of pretzels. The lip gloss she left her apartment with two hours ago is still perfectly in place, glistening with every bite she takes. Her teeth are perfect, and Josh remembers the way they felt against his tongue. Even though she is standing right there, he feels the loss of her keenly like sand slipping through his fingers, like the more he tries to hold on to her the more she slips away, but he can’t stop trying to keep her.

Tyler’s long-boned fingers reach out and steal a pretzel. The look Debby gives him is murderous, but she doesn’t say anything.

“Is it close to midnight?” Josh asks.

“Very,” Debby says. “Are you going to be my kiss at 12?”

His chest feels warm. “If you want me to be.”

She shrugs. It isn’t necessarily the enthusiastic answer he had hoped for, but the sting of her reluctance doesn’t stand a chance against his swollen pride: she asked _him_ , didn’t she? Hadn’t Josh told himself all night that he wasn’t going to make a big deal of it, definitely wasn’t going to ask _her_ and see that look of disappointment on her face. A New Year’s Eve kiss was a big deal though. Starting the year right and all.

The countdown starts and he doesn’t even notice that Tyler has slipped away with Josh’s drink.

As the last seconds of 2017 slip into the first seconds of 2018, they kiss. Her lip gloss is slick and filmy, and she tastes like salt. Her fingers brush the back of his neck, and taking her lead, he keeps the kiss chaste. He tells himself that he’s going to stop chasing her, to let her set the pace for once, but he doesn’t know if he’s prepared for her not to chase him back. When they part, her smile is gentle and genuine, softer than the shadows under her eyes.

“Happy New Year’s, Joshua.”

“Happy New Year,” he says, hoping to speak it true.

#

The party holds strong until two in the morning when it begins to taper off. Couples and groups drift out and Josh is hoping to drift out with Debby himself; maybe back to his apartment, maybe back to hers, but hopefully nowhere alone.

At one point, he asks a group of people he recognizes from floor D whether 12D has had her baby yet. They stare at each other blankly, like he has strung his sentence together backwards. A blonde with acne scars twitches her nose. “ _I’m_ 12D. I’m not pregnant.”

Josh doesn’t need to glance at the woman’s bony figure to know that. “Oh,” he says. “I met a woman when I moved in who was super pregnant—she said she was 12D. I walked her back to her apartment after I helped her with her laundry one time—”

“She moved out,” 2D says. The conversation moves on without the chance for Josh to get another word in edgewise. He returns to his corner of the room, feeling a little melancholy at the loss of her. She’d been nice. Josh had never even learned her real name.

He stays after with a few others and the maintenance group to help clean up, mostly because he can’t find Debby, but also because he feels a little guilty for the mess left behind that no one else seems to want to take responsibility for.

Clutching a trash bag in one hand, he’s making a second circuit around the room to collect cups stinking with alcohol when a hand comes out of the detergent closet, grabs the collar of his shirt and tugs him inside, sliding the door shut. There’s no knob, just a hole where one should be that lets in light from the basement. A bulb dangles from the ceiling but no one has reached up to turn it on. It smells like Tide and makes his nose itch.

“Whatthefuck—”

“It’s me,” Tyler whispers.

“I can see that—what the _fuck_ —”

“I was about to go out onto the roof. Come with me?”

“What are you doing in here?” Josh asks. His eyes adjust and he can see the shelves of laundry detergent and dryer sheets.

“I like how it smells,” Tyler says. His delivery is so deadpan that Josh can’t tell if he’s serious or not.

“Have you been hiding here since midnight? You could have hung out with me and Debby—”

“What’s with the third degree? The party is in the basement, the closet counts as the basement doesn’t it? Don’t make this weird. I’ll be on the roof. Wait five minutes and then come after me. Got it?” Without waiting for Josh’s answer, Tyler slips the sliding door open and disappears, calling out some cheerful greeting. Josh only waits for Tyler to disappear up the stairs (if he kneels, he can see through the hole where the doorknob should be) before coming out.

The hairs on his neck stand up as he picks up his discarded trash bag. He has the feeling that everyone had turned to look at the them—the closet, Tyler, Josh—but when he glances around the room, everyone seems preoccupied with the clean-up. Suddenly filled with the creeps, he trashes the trash and disappears up the wooden stairs which creak under his tired steps.

By the time he makes it to the top floor and out onto the roof, his thighs burn. The roof has a few tables under umbrellas, but the umbrellas are wrapped up tightly and the tables are covered in snow. Columbus glows, and against the glow is Tyler’s skinny figure, a swath piece of darkness that turns and waves dramatically.

Freezing, exhausted, thinking about Debby who (Josh can dream) might be waiting for him back at his apartment, he trudges through the snow to stand a safe distance away from the edge of the building. Tyler’s face lights up as he looks at his phone.

“You’re almost right on time,” Tyler says. “A little late. Did I take your breath away, or was it the stairs?”

“The six million flights of stairs,” Josh pants. “I’m pretty sure you’ll have to carry me down them.”

Tyler hums. “You never know. I’m stronger than I look. You should get more cardio though, it’s good for the heart.”

“Thanks for the advice.”

“What are you doing so far from the edge?” Tyler asks. “Right here’s the best view. Come on over.”

There’s something about the phrasing of that: distant alarms start going off in the back of Josh’s brain. He shuffles closer by the tiniest amount, silencing the bells and whistles that tell him _something isn’t good here_ but not ignoring them. What kind of guy invites another guy up to the roof and then tries to coerce him closer to the edge? Tyler. A really, really weird guy.

“ _Clo_ -ser.”

“What for?”

Tyler squints. “Am I scaring you?”

“No,” Josh lies.

Tyler steps up onto the ledge of the roof. “How about now?”

“A little bit. It’s freezing out here, let’s go back in.”

Tyler plops down to let his feet dangle off of the building, the seat of his pants going right in the snow. He has poor posture, back hunched over like he’s upset or like he spends all day in front of the computer. A hand drifts up to scratch at his forehead, and then he tugs off his beanie altogether. It’s the first time Josh has ever seen him without it: underneath there is a wild tuft of dark (brown? Maybe black?) hair. His shoulders shrug. “I don’t know,” he says. “I’m not really in the mood to go in.”

There’s no mistaking the melancholy in his voice. Josh shuffles to the edge and sits cross legged beside him, refusing to let any part of himself dangle fourteen stories up. He feels like an idiot—what, did he think that Tyler was going to kill him or something? “What’s up?” He asks. “You sound down.”

“I don’t know. I’ve got this headache. I’ve had it for like—twelve years?”

“You should probably get that checked out.”

“I took some Tylenol earlier, don’t worry about it. But there’s something about parties. Do parties like, bum you out?”

“Maybe,” Josh says. “What do you mean exactly?”

“I don’t know. There’s something about a group of people all together having a good time. It makes me feel like disappearing. I went outside for a while and watched everybody through the window, that little one down in the basement, you know? But it was really cold and my nose wouldn’t stop dripping.”

“That’s—I’m not going to like, _lie_ to you, that’s pretty weird. That’s a pretty weird thing to do.”

“The closet was warmer, and I do like the smell. I don’t know what I’m talking about. Sometimes I just talk just to breathe, like if I’m not talking, then I’m drowning. Do you ever feel like maybe you’re in too deep?” Tyler twists his beanie in his hands.

“Maybe,” Josh says again. “Do you?”

“No,” Tyler grins. They stare at each other. A smile blooms across the other man’s face, and Josh can’t help but return it: he’s one of those people. They both laugh, but Josh isn’t sure what they’re laughing about. Reaching up, Tyler tugs his beanie back on, and Josh misses the sight of his wild hat-hair. He reaches out and touches the back of Josh’s neck, echoing the touch Debby gave him only a few hours ago. Josh’s heart skips, starts up again at double time. He holds his breath, but it feels like Tyler’s holding it for him, all with the brush of his fingers against the back of Josh’s neck.

Tyler grabs a fistful of Josh’s shirt and jerks him forward violently. Josh is so caught off guard that he leans forward and gets a look over the edge, sees the cars below in the parking lot that look so tiny from all the way up here. The wind makes his eyes squint shut, and he thanks instinct that makes his hand come up to collide with Tyler’s forearm and knock the other man’s grip free. Josh slips backwards off of the edge of the ledge and onto the roof where snow soaks through his thin jacket. Tyler lets himself fall on top of him, slim legs straddling Josh’s narrow hips. Tyler is a skinny fucker but he’s strong, hauling Josh onto his feet and back towards the edge.

A steady stream of _nonononono_ _letmegoletmego whatthefuckareyoudoing’s_ slip from Josh’s mouth. He digs his fingers into Tyler’s tender wrists, scratching with blunt nails. It has no affect. In the moonlight he gets a good glimpse of the other man’s face: eyes half-lidded, mouth open in ecstasy or concentration. Tyler jerks them towards the edge again and this time Josh is sure he will go over, that he will hit every balcony on the way down and land on some soccer mom’s van, when Tyler digs his heals into the ground and makes them spin in a full circle like some fucked up waltz. They careen away from the edge and tumble down together.

Tyler leans over him and kisses him full on the lips. There are teeth.

“Happy New Year’s, Joshua,” he says, then he laughs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to my patrons. Please take time to leave a comment and tell me what you think. Criticism is welcome.
> 
> Find me on twitter @ Spooky_Sad


	3. Chapter 3

The next time Josh sees Tyler, he almost steps on him. 

It’s the crack of dawn when Josh lugs his laundry down to the basement. He is the first one to flip on the light switch for the day. Eyes bleary with exhaustion but needing his uniform clean for work, he tries not to stumble ass over ears on the steps as he trudges down. Josh works as a waiter at a nice restaurant downtown. It serves lobster, so it’s already more high-end than anything Josh can afford. He keeps his hair cut and undyed, his face cleanly shaved, and his tattoos covered; hence, the old ladies fucking love him. But he’s already been late once this week because the dryers downstairs take for-fucking-ever to dry his uniform, so he’s not planning on making the same mistake twice. 

Josh loads up the first washer he sees, dumping in an indiscriminate amount of laundry soap. Shivering in the cold basement, he stares out the tiny window that leads into the parking lot. The sky is still a deep blue, only beginning to hint at the morning sun. He stands there for twenty minutes and watches it lighten, waiting for the machine to switch cycles so he can add the fabric softener. He misses 12D. 

 The sun comes up. Josh sits scrolling on his phone until the clothes are ready for drying. He’s out of the little dryer sheets—and normally shit like that wouldn’t matter to him, except they make the clothes so soft, okay, and they get rid of the static that makes him shock himself on every fork and knife he touches—so he goes to the closet at the corner of the room to borrow some from the community stock. 

And Tyler is asleep on the closet floor. The noise Josh makes when he sees the dark form lying on the ground is undignified, terrified. He barely manages to keep from shouting. Tyler is dressed in a dark pair of flannel pants and a university hoodie. His red beanie is off, clutched in his hands. Without it, he looks strangely younger, less like an adult trying to look hip, whatever that means. His mouth is open, drool drying on one cheek. 

What the _fuck_. For a moment he wonders, is Tyler homeless? But of course he isn’t; he lives in the goddamn apartment complex. There’s no good reason why he should be sleeping in the basement laundry room. Josh should step on him, should give him a swift kick in the ribs for the stunt he tried to pull on New Year’s Eve. But the man on the floor couldn’t seem more disconnected from that strange, dark entity on the roof, the one who twirled him around and kissed him. This man just looks tired and cold. 

Josh reaches out and takes one of the boxes of dryer sheets off the shell (dollar store, 99 cents, but it will get the job done). Very gently, he closes the closet door. Instead of waiting on one of the benches for his laundry to finish, he carefully goes back upstairs. Maybe he’s forgiving Tyler, but he doesn’t want to be caught alone with the guy. When he comes back downstairs an hour later, his clothes are still in the dryer, warm, clean. 

The closet is empty.

After his early shift ends, he texts Debby and asks if she wants him to meet her at work and bring her lunch. 

**DEBBY: didnt we eat together yesterday? U need to save ur money**

**JOSH: Ok. How about you come over after u r off tho?**

It takes her a long time to reply with a simple **OK** , but she’s at work, so she’s probably busy. Josh resolves not to text her again. He doesn’t want to come across as desperate as he feels, and instead he spends the rest of the afternoon organizing his DVD collection by genre and title. The note from 12D is folded and tucked under the succulent Tyler gifted him, nearly forgotten.

Debby knocks on his door still in her uniform, smelling like burnt coffee. Her hair is in a low ponytail with too many tendrils coming loose for it to be messy-chic. It’s clear that she isn’t in the talking mood by the way she kisses him. They lay down a blanket so they aren’t having sex on the bare floor. When they’ve finished, she nestles her head in the crook of his arm and he stares out the window at the sky turning dark. He wouldn’t mind spending the night in this empty apartment, sleeping on the hard floor, if maybe Debby would stay with him. 

“Stay,” he says, gently, in a way that he hopes will be romantic. 

She groans, pushing herself away. The spot she leaves behind feels cold without her. Josh watches, hurt, while she gathers her clothes. “Why do you always have to go and ruin a good thing?” She asks him, slinging her work apron over one arm.

She leaves without so much as a goodbye. Josh stares out the peephole as she disappears and doesn’t move away until he hears her door close next door. He pulls at his hair, wondering why he had to open his big mouth. 

#

It’s the middle of the night. His eyes open, staring at the uninterrupted darkness. Something has awoken him, but he doesn’t know what. When he reaches for his phone, he sees that it isn’t even two in the morning. 

_Thud. Thud. Thud._

He jumps, dropping his phone and losing it in the folds of his coverlet. He blinks, suddenly wide awake. There’s someone knocking on his door. He contemplates leaving it (there’s no decent reason anyone should be knocking this late at night, and Debby could just message him if she needed him, though he doubts bitterly that she’d need him in a thousand years), but it comes again, slow and loud. _Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud._

It’s still continuing when he rolls out of bed, turning the flashlight app on his phone on, and creeping towards the door, carefully, so as to avoid letting the person on the other side know he is awake. Squinting, he presses his eye to the peephole. 

There is only darkness. It takes him a moment to realize that there are always lights on in the hallway and that he should be able to see _something_ , except: there is something in the way. He double checks that the chain is secured before undoing the deadbolt very slowly. The knocking comes again, so much louder now that he’s up close. He waits for it to stop and then gently pulls the door open, barely wide enough to see out. 

It’s Debby. She’s wearing a nightgown, one of those sexy silky numbers and a pair of boxer shorts that aren’t his. Her eyes are closed in a peaceful expression of sleep. On her forehead is a patch of reddened skin. He realizes why when her head lolls forward to bang against his door. _THUD. THUD. THUD_. The chain lock rattles. 

“Debby?” He whispers. His heart is hammering in his chest. “Debby, what the fuck?”

She turns away, lips parting. Her eyes stay closed as she slowly disappears from his view. It dawns on him: she must be sleepwalking. 

She hasn’t walked back to her apartment but towards the stairs. He curses under his breath, throwing the lock open. If she falls down the stairs, he’ll never forgive himself. But when he makes it out into the hallway, she’s already at the bottom of the landing, walking with plenty of agility for someone whose eyes are closed. 

Josh creeps halfway down the stairs to watch her. Without pause, she opens the basement door and disappears down the dark stairs. She leaves the door open, just a crack. It only takes him half a minute to sprint back to his apartment and pull on sweats and a t-shirt. He can’t just let Debby wander around the apartment complex half-dressed and asleep. 

Adrenalin pumping, he sprints on his tiptoes down the stairs and to the basement door. He has thrown it open wide without care before realizing his mistake. 

Because the basement is full. He can hear the murmuring of voices. He blinks, squinting through the darkness. The first thought that comes to him (one he would laugh at later, if he could laugh about any of this) is that there just happens to be a large group of people collectively doing their laundry in the middle of the night. Something in him must know differently, because he holds his breath and takes the most careful, quietest steps that he can, crouching on one of the upper steps and craning his neck down to peer into the basement. 

The only light is coming from the tiny window above the washers that lets in the glow of the streetlight from the parking lot. The folding benches have been pushed together and away to the edges of the room like they were on New Year’s Eve. There must be two dozen people, some sitting, others standing. They’re in their nightwear, pajama pants and tank-tops and all varieties of undress. 

_What the fuck_ , Josh mouths to himself. 

Seated up on one of the washers is Tyler. The sight of him gives Josh the shivers. He’s not dressed for bed like the others, just in dark jeans and his university sweatshirt. The lip of his red beanie is folded down over his eyes like a makeshift eyemask. 

The crowd is parted in the center of the floor, where a wrinkled blue tarp is unrolled. Sitting on the tarp with her legs spread out in front of her is a petite blonde woman. Duct tape has been wrapped around her eyes, glinting in the dim light from the window. Her thin wrists are bound behind her back and her chest heaves with breaths which are stunted by the tape over her mouth. There’s something familiar about her, but Josh can’t decide what it is. He spots Debby in a far corner, eyes half-lidded like she’s dazed with sleep. 

“Are we all here?” Tyler asks. His voice isn’t the same quiet, fragile tenor that Josh had become used to hearing. It cuts through the noise in the room like a knife. There is an eerie arrogance about him as he leans forward to rest an elbow on his knee. There’s no way he can see through the fabric of his beanie, but Josh can’t help but think that there’s some way he _can_ see. He motions with his hand.

Though she’s wearing her pajamas, Josh recognizes Led Zeppelin as she steps forward. Up close, her features are sharper than they’d appeared when he first saw her on the balcony. It looks like she’s gone to bed with her makeup on: eyeliner smeared down her cheeks. She has the same half-lidded eyes as Debby, as everyone in the room. In one hand is a worn, wooden baseball bat. 

Josh doesn’t understand, not until the very last moment, not until Led Zeppelin lifts the baseball bat and brings it down on the blonde’s head. It makes a sharp thwack and he almost immediately knows the girl is dead. She sprawls backwards, head dented. Her legs twitch like she’s trying to run. He sees the ratty Metallica shirt, surely not her own, and realizes why she is familiar: it’s the girl from the other balcony.

“I’m sorry,” the brunette slurs tiredly through her tears. She raises the bat and brings it down again on her girlfriend’s face: the dull crunch of bone and cartilage making Josh flinch where he is crouched on the steps. “I’m sorry.” _Thwack_. “I’m sorry.” _Thwack_. “I’m sorry.” 

“Harder,” Tyler says. He stretches his arms over his head and yawns. 

Josh falls backwards, sprawling on the steps. For a moment, he teeters and nearly falls down them. He catches his balance and scrambles up the stairs, uncaring of the noise he makes. If he runs quickly enough, no one will be able to catch him. The adrenalin makes him feel like he could run a marathon and come in first. He barely breathes until he’s inside his apartment, scrambling for the cellphone he left on his sleeping bag. 

He dials 911 and immediately ends the call before it can even ring. He stares at the phone, mind moving so quickly that every thought feels blurry. Why did he do that? Why did he pause? He dials again, but his finger hovers over the final number, hesitating. 

Debby. 

A girl was just murdered. 

But _Debby_. 

He puts his phone down and begins to pace. He tells himself that he’s going to pick his cell back up in a few moments, he’s going to call the police, but he isn’t really so sure. In his head, he sees and hears the baseball bat coming down again and again. Led Zeppelin repeating _I’m sorry, I’m sorry_ , like she hadn’t wanted to kill the blonde from the other balcony. Debby outside his front door, knocking in her sleep. He remembers the glazed, empty look in everyone’s eyes; had they all been sleepwalking? Was that fucking _possible_? 

It had to be. The implications otherwise were too much, too large for him to grasp. 

But Tyler. Tyler definitely had not been sleepwalking. 

Josh hears a noise from the hall, so quiet that he can’t even name it: a rustle? A creak? He wants to look out but doesn’t dare. Instead, he creeps to the kitchen drawer where the knives are and chooses the most threatening one. Part of him wants to be as far from the front door as possible, but another part of him is terrified to let it out of his sight, like something could creep in while his back is turned. He ends up dragging the blanket from his bed into the main room. He props himself up against the wall with the door directly in his sight. In one hand he clenches the knife, and in the other he clenches his phone. He doesn’t know when and he doesn’t know how, but eventually he falls asleep. 

#

Josh wakes with a crick in his neck and a knife in his hand. Someone is jimmying the handle to his door, and when he hears the metallic scrape of a key in the lock, he feels like someone has doused him with cold water. He scrambles out of his sleeping bag, nearly falling and impaling himself. The door jerks open but is stopped by the chain lock. 

“Hello?” Debby calls. “Joshua? It’s noon, get your lazy ass up. I brought coffee!”

He is creeping to the door when he realizes he still is clenching the knife in his hand. He puts it down. 

There is no hint of the Debby from last night, the burnt coffee smell, the rumpled silk nightgown, the dazed expression. She is polished and gleaming, hair in thick curls, smelling like spices and Starbucks. When she sees him, she raises her eyebrows. 

“Rough night?” She asks. Like she doesn’t fucking know.

“Do you want to explain what happened last night?” He whispers. A part of him feels like last night was nothing but a vivid nightmare, like talking about it aloud in the light of day will make it real. He wants so very badly for it not to have been real.  

Her mouth gets tense. “Yeah, I guess I owe you that. Can I come in?” 

Against his better judgement, he unlocks the door and lets her in. Debby uses her palms to lift herself up onto the counter since there are still no proper seats. She pops the lid off of her coffee and inhales the steam. 

He puts distance between them, standing nearly with his back against the opposite wall, watching her mutely. He isn’t sure where to fucking start, what to fucking say. There’s no WikiHow for asking your sort-of girlfriend why she was an accomplice to murder. 

Debby rolls her eyes. She sits down her coffee and picks up the knife that Josh has left next to her on the countertop, turning it over in her hands and staring at him from under her lashes. He can’t tell if it’s a blatant threat, can’t see anything meaningful in her expression. The glint off of the blade from the overhead light holds him hostage anyway. “Don’t be so dramatic. You always get like this.” 

Unable to decide if she is baiting him, he stays still and quiet, waiting to see her next move. 

She sighs. “Can’t we just forget it happened?”

“I can’t forget,” Josh whispers. His mouth feels like it belongs to someone else. He’s never been this afraid, never been so acutely aware of his helplessness. 

“Look, I’m sorry,” she says with humility. “I shouldn’t have just walked out on you like that last night. I know that I’ve been giving you mixed signals—I’m going through some things, I guess. Is it just so wrong that I like what we have? We have great sex, no strings—”

“I’m sorry,” Josh says, holding up a hand. “But are you kidding?”

The embarrassed look falls away from her face and he sees the anger underneath. Debby’s face can be like a river: so calm on top to disguise the dangerous waters underneath.  “You aren’t making this conversation any easier to have. You don’t have to be an asshole.” 

“I don’t want to hear about us!” He struggles to lower his voice. “I want to hear about the girl you all killed.” 

Her eyebrows draw together. She stops playing with the knife. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m not stupid,” he says, feeling a little stupid. “I saw you. I saw all of you. I saw what you did.” 

“What kind of joke is this?” She asks. “It’s not very funny.” 

“You think I’m trying to be funny?” 

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing.” She looks unsure, almost afraid. “Are you okay? What happened last night after I left? Did you— _drink_?”

“Don’t try to make me feel crazy,” he says. “I’m not. I know what I saw.” 

“You don’t. I have no idea what you’re saying, and you’re freaking me out.” Debby shifts herself off of the counter and puts the knife into his sink where it thuds hollowly. It’s a relief to see it out of her hands. She leaves his coffee to cool untouched where the succulent used to sit. He plans to pour it down the drain as soon as she leaves. The thought of it—the thought of everything, at the moment—makes him feel sick. “Look. I’m out of here. Text me whenever you get over—whatever _this_ is.” 

He’s on the door like a spider on a fly, ready to slam it behind her, wondering what in the hell he had been thinking last night when he hadn’t called the police—he hadn’t been thinking, clearly, had been delusional because of his fear, like he was some little kid. Josh is about to shut the door when he hears a gentle throat clear from outside in the hallway. A _hem_. It makes the hairs on his arms stand up. He glances over on instinct. 

Tyler is kneeling beside 4B’s doorway. Sitting on a little rubber mat outside the old man’s door are two tiny porcelain dishes, one filled with pellets of cat food and the other half-full of water. Tyler is stroking the shorthair’s back as it laps daintily at the rippling water. He’s dressed like he’s on his way to a funeral, his red hat pulled down low over his eyes. He’s smiling, gently. “Hey buddy,” he says. He scoops the cat up into his arms, where it purrs contentedly. “Have you met Bihn?”

Josh lurches back inside his apartment. The door is just about to slam closed when Tyler’s skinny foot slips inside. Josh doesn’t give a fuck—if Tyler wants to have his foot in Josh’s apartment, he’d better be prepared to lose it—and throws his full weight against the door. It feels like trying to close to the door on a brick wall, and for a moment the door teeters back and forth violently before crashing open, knocking Josh backwards. He only barely manages to stay standing. Bihn and Tyler stand in the doorway giving twin blank expressions. 

“Get out,” Josh says. 

“Bihn is the Vietnamese word for peaceful,” Tyler says. He reaches a gentle hand up and rubs behind one feline ear. “I think it’s pretty _apropos_ , especially for this little guy. He’s really a sweetheart.” 

“I swear to god, I’ll call the cops.”

“Okay, first of all? _Rude_. There’s a general way that conversations work: they require give and take, and they require staying on the topic, which in this case was good Vietnamese names for cats. Secondly? Telling a criminal that you’re going to call the cops on them is—wow, to be honest I can’t understand what could be going through your brain right now. I’m honestly, like, a little baffled. Are you trying to _threaten_ me?” Tyler’s eyes widen, lashes brushing against the edge of his beanie. “I’m not asking because my feelings are hurt, I’m just asking so that I can know what kind of a repertoire we’re going to have, here. I mean, is this the borderline sexual tension of two mortal enemies butting heads? Or is this the part where the _spine_ less, _thought_ less victim lashes out with ineffectual defense mechanisms before they piss their pants and get their skin sloughed off?” 

Josh scrambles for his cellphone. He expects the other man to try to intercept him, but Tyler turns to gently shut the door to the apartment.

“If you call the police on me,” he says, “I’ll kill you. I won’t even need to put Bihn down to do it. It will be quick, and afterwards? Afterwards won’t matter. It won’t matter if the cops get me, it won’t matter if I get away. It won’t matter if I drop trou and fuck your corpse’s eye sockets. Nothing will matter to _you_. Because you’ll be _dead_. Does that make sense? Am I talking too fast? My mom says that I talk too fast when I get excited.”

Shaking all over, Josh leaves the phone where it’s at. He can’t bring himself to move away from it though. He can’t bring himself to move at all. 

“That’s good,” Tyler says. “That’s smart.” 

“What do you want?” Josh asks.

“To talk. Partly about last night. Partly about Bihn.” 

Josh says nothing. 

“I really like cats,” Tyler says. His voice is quiet and flimsy, sounding a little on the verge of breaking at all times. There’s nothing threatening about his average height and below average build. His demeanor is fragile and unassuming, and he is constantly having to shift the cat in his arms to push his beanie up higher so that he can see. “Animals and babies are the only blameless things in the whole world to me. They can’t do anything wrong, because they can’t even _think_ for themselves. Everything that they do is just…part of their nature. There aren’t any bad kitties. Just naughty owners. I’d never, ever hurt Bihn.

“And you remind me of Bihn. Now I _know_ that you saw us last night. Partly because _I_ saw _you_ —” (Josh doesn’t know how that’s possible with the way Tyler’s hat was pulled down over his eyes like some kind of makeshift blindfold, but he isn’t interested in examining that minor detail) “— _and_ partly because I was totally listening in to your conversation with Debby earlier. These doors are super thin. FYI. I thought that I would pop in and give my obligatory cinematic villainous speech and say that if I were you, I wouldn’t be the one to stand in the way between me and my sleepwalkers. I’m a man on a mission, you could say.”

“A mission,” Josh repeats numbly. “What mission?”

“Come to a meeting and find out,” Tyler says. “This is your formal invitation: sealed envelope and all.” 

Josh shakes his head. Tyler shrugs.

“Soon. You will. Debby will come around to invite you again. I should probably get going; I interrupted Bihn here during his midday sup, and if there’s one thing I understand about cats it’s that they get—”

“Leave Debby alone,” Josh blurts out. 

Tyler stops where he was halfway out the door. Bihn wriggles, growling dangerously, and Tyler stoops to let the cat out of his arms. It disappears passed the doorframe, but Tyler lingers there, leaning against the frame, hip cocked, arms crossed. His lips are drawn into a frown. “Um— _no_?”

“I swear to God, leave Debby alone or—”

“Or?”

“—I’ll make you.” 

Tyler appraises him seriously. He shakes his head. “So this _is_ the sexual-tension-mortal-enemy thing. Here I was hoping you wouldn’t be so…one dimensional. Look, I’ve really got to be going. I’m out of boxed macaroni and cheese. They’re doing this sale at Aldi’s, ten for ten. I could pick you up some too, if you wanted? No? Well, if you change your mind—” He stalks to the counter and scoops Josh’s phone into one fine-boned hand. Somehow, he knows the five digit passcode. “—I put my number in your phone. You can text me day or night. As you can guess, I’m a bit of a night owl.

“And Josh?”

He stares.

“From now on? No more locking your door. I want to feel welcome.”

#

He panics. He can’t sit still, pacing jerkily from one end of the apartment to the other, phone clutched in his hand so tightly that it creaks. His breaths are wheezy and ineffectual, like he’s trying to suck down his air through a straw. He nearly pulls his hair out, feeling like he has to do something and feeling helpless to do anything. 

In the end, he crawls into his bathtub to cry, closing the plastic curtain as if for privacy. /What is he going to do? What can he do? He’s in danger—Debby is in danger. He forfeited the key to his old apartment, he had no living relatives within one hundred miles, and he didn’t even have a car that he could squat in in a Wal-mart parking lot. There was nowhere to go, no one to trust. 

His phone buzzed in his hand, startling him into dropping it. He scrambles to pick it up. It’s from: TYLER ;)

**HEY J! GOOGLED THIS ON MY PHONE AND THOUGHT YOU’D FIND IT INTERESTING. xoxo**

Attached was a link to the Ohio dot gov site, detailing that in Ohio it’s a class two misdemeanor to fail to report a felony. Josh is googling some of the terms to better understand when more texts from Tyler come through.

**SO HOW LONG DO YOU THINK A PERSON HAS TO REPORT A CRIME BEFORE IT’S “TOO LATE”? WAITING OVERNIGHT AND DRINKING COFFEE IN THE MORNING IS PROBABLY TOO LONG, AMIRIGHT? HOW MUCH JAIL TIME WOULD A PERSON GET FOR A C2 MIS.? ASKING FOR A FRIEND ;)**

Josh shuts his phone off before anymore texts can come through and make him sick. His hitching sobs echo off of the porcelain and bath tiles. The knob of the faucet digs between his shoulder blades, but it’s the least of his concern. He wouldn’t even categorize what he’s feeling as concern. It’s mortal peril. It feels like a brush with death, only death is a living breathing maniac who wants to buy him pasta. Just as sickening as his fear is his impotence. _What do I do? What can I_ do _?_ The questions echo off of the inside of his skull like his cries off the tiles. No solution presents itself. He’s never been clever, never been brave. 

His mind becomes like a song on loop, revisiting the same thoughts over and over again, unable to move on to the next track. 

He needs to call the police. Tyler’s threat about failing to report a felony doesn’t have Josh scared—a few months (even years) in jail wouldn’t matter if his life is in danger. More than once, his finger hovers over the power button on his phone, prepared to turn it on. He could walk out of the apartment, take a bus across Columbus to the police station. He should do it. 

But Debby. What the fuck can he do about Debby? He can’t believe that she is a bad person. And okay, maybe Debby isn’t a good person. Maybe she uses Josh for sex. Maybe she strings him along sometimes. Maybe those boxers he saw her wearing last night _do_ belong to some other guy, some other poor sap who she has caught in her trap the same way she has Josh caught. But that doesn’t make her a murderer. It doesn’t make her evil. Debby would loan him money in a heartbeat. She always gives her change to the freezing Salvation Army volunteers ringing their bells outside of Wal-mart. She cries every time she hears the song Rock-a-Bye-Baby. Whatever is going on, Josh knows that she is just as much a victim in it, just as trapped as he is. Maybe she had even been through this herself: crying in her tub, paralyzed to reach out, threatened by Tyler. The thought makes his heart clench, his teeth grind. Debby is the one person within a hundred miles who he _has_. 

He has to help her. He has to _save_ her. 

But how? Josh’s fervor is only matched by his powerlessness. If crouching on the stairs and running away could get him jailtime, what would Debby get as someone in the basement? A thought comes to him like a drop of water falling from the showerhead: have there been other murders? He thinks he knows the answer. He doesn’t want to know the answer. If Josh is in trouble, Debby is in Deep Shit. 

Calling the cops is out of the question. Everything feels out of the question. So what could he do?

He looks up into the dripping faucet like he might find God there and wipes his burning eyes. A quietness comes over his mind and he loses his thoughts in the fog. There’s no use trying to find them, so Josh lets them go. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is everybody out there having a good time yet? 
> 
> Happy New Year's (Eve)! Don't drink and drive. And safely park before you come find me on Twitter @ Spooky_Sad. Leave me a comment here or come yell at me. 
> 
> ALL my love to my patrons. Incredible people.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one is pretty fucked just a warning, pls read all the tags.

In his apartment, he feels tentatively safe. The door holds back the flood of his fear like a dam holds back a river, but he can’t stay in his apartment forever. Holding his breath, he takes the plunge, thrusting open his door. The hallway is empty. 4B’s door is cracked a few inches as usual, and he hears quiet voices coming from within, too low to recognize. Josh stares at 12B, ready to make a hasty retreat if there is so much as a single sign of its occupant, but the hallway is empty and otherwise peaceful. 

The basement is the last place he wants to go. So it’s the place he makes himself go, swallowing down the anxious roiling of his stomach. He’s sweating, feet dragging, pulse racing. The door to the basement opens and it’s immediately ten degrees cooler. There comes a noise, a dull, hollow crack, a baseball bat on a skull and he knows he’s going to be sick, he _knows_ it—but he isn’t. There is no noise, except for the distant rumbling of one of the dryers. 

The laundry room is empty.

The benches are all back in place. 

There is no tarp on the floor, no body, no blood, no hint at a struggle. The dryer in the corner tumbles on and on and on and on. 

He’s sweating. Shivering. His brain feels like the machine in the corner, thoughts tumbling on and on and on and on with no real place to go. A voice in the back of his head calls out. It reminds him of change left in a pocket of jeans thrown in the wash, the rhythmic clicking of a coin that shouldn’t be there. The voice tells him that maybe he’s crazy. There’s always a part of him that fears it, the part of him that knows the fragility of his mind. Losing his sanity has never seemed like a matter of if—only a matter of _when_. It is karma, constantly building, sands in an hourglass. Losing his apartment, losing Debby…maybe those were the final grains to push him over the edge. 

His throat burns, clenched up tight. 

He needs air. 

Josh walks outside with no coat on. It’s cold but he’s already shaking so what’s the difference? Debby’s car is in it’s spot. When he tugs on the handle, it’s unlocked. Inside, it’s just as cold, but at least there’s no wind. At least there’s some modicum of privacy, a place where he can break down in peace. He locks the door. Across the lot is a maintenance man with a cart, emptying trash into the dumpsters. Large, with a moon shaped face, he is vaguely familiar; Josh thinks he was at the New Year’s Eve party. 

And then he sees it. 

On the bottom shelf of the cart is— _something_ —wrapped up in a blue tarp. The shape of it is only marginally human, but it’s big enough to be, laced closed in silvery duct tape. He knows, then. He _knows_. No tears come to his eyes, only the anxious beating of his heart. He feels detached from it somehow. _It barely looks human_. The woman inside must be folded up, bent nearly in half and curled up like a baby in the womb. He thinks of 12D. 

While he watches, the man empties the last trash can. Then he stoops down and heaves the blue tarp from the cart. It lolls like a body would—like Josh imagines a body would—and the man tips it into the dumpster, lets its own weight drag it down into the depths with all the trash. There isn’t any cartoonish moment of villainy when the man looks left or right, no moment of conscience or fear of being caught. He either doesn’t know or he doesn’t care. But he has to know. He _has_ to know. 

It’s too much then. This is all too big for him, and all of his fears aside, there’s only one thing a white male raised in a middle-class household in Ohio can do. Josh shifts his phone out of his pocket, and he calls nine-one-one. 

What’s your emergency? They ask. 

_I just saw someone dump a dead body._

Josh gives them the address and tells them about the dumpster. When they ask him for his name, he doesn’t give it. Whose body is it? They ask, and he has to say that he doesn’t know. _My neighbor_ , he almost says. But in the end _: I don’t know_. He hangs up before they can ask anymore questions, too afraid of how his throat might close up in fear if they ask him who did it. He feels sick, sweating, shaking. Josh can’t stay in the car anymore. He doesn’t want to be outside when the police show up. 

Inside his apartment, he cries a little, pacing. He locks his door. Then unlocks it. Then locks it again. The bathtub calls to him: a little porcelain place of peace, but he can’t sit still, and he thinks he might be too afraid to look away from the front door. Who knows what might creep through it when he has his back turned. 

Ten minutes pass. 

Fifteen, and he can’t take it anymore. Desperate to know what's going on, he goes into his bedroom and empties clean clothes from the drawers and into a laundry basket, ruffling them out of their neat folds. The hallway is empty when he sticks his head out. 4B’s door is closed, Bihn’s water and food dishes sitting empty on their little silicone mat. At the end of the hallway is a window that overlooks the parking lot, and it’s where Josh pauses. 

There are three police cars in the lot. Two are local: City of Columbus, boys in black and white. One is from the State of Ohio. The sight of them gives him such poignant relief that he smiles—smiles to no one, to himself. The police are here now; everything will be alright now. Like when he was a child and his parents first taught him how police are the Heroes, how any time he is in trouble, he can rely on a Policeman to be lurking about to save the day, Superman’s suit underneath their starched white shirts. 

There is a forth officer, from an unmarked car: he’s in the dumpster. Josh watches with bated breath: the head of the man appearing and then disappearing as he stoops and stands and shifts trash and searches—except the girl from the basement would be impossible to miss, and she must be right on top. 

Only he keeps searching. Sifting. At last, the guy rests his forearms on the lip of the dumpster, and Josh can see him shift his shoulders in a universal expression of confusion.

Josh gets lost in his grief, his disbelief. _I’m dreaming_ , he thinks. This is a nightmare, and I’ll wake up any moment. Like a phantasm or a dream figment, Tyler appears, conjured from thin air and bad thoughts, brushing shoulders with Josh to look out the window at the police officers in the parking lot. Josh is too afraid to move, a rabbit in a dog’s gaze. Tyler’s hand rests so gently on his shoulder, but it holds him in place.  

“What do you think they’re looking for?” Tyler asks. His breath brushes Josh’s neck.

“I don’t know,” Josh lies, lips numb. 

“Leftovers? Priceless ancient artifacts? A—uh— _dead body_?” Tyler’s hand tightens, just a little, almost like a friendly squeeze.

This time Josh says nothing. 

Outside, they close the top of the dumpster. Josh feels like he was there in the dumpster, like the darkness has just closed in on him. The officers all stand around, hands planted above the bulks of their guns and tasers. They talk, but not for long. Inside the apartment building, both men watch as they return to their patrol cars. 

“I guess whatever they’re looking for, they didn’t find it,” says Tyler. His smile is soft, charming even if it isn’t very handsome. “Maybe you just imagined it. _May_ be you’re going crazy.”

Tyler walks with him back to his door. _Were you going to do laundry?_ He asks, pointing to the basket of clean clothes that Josh had been using as an excuse to leave his apartment. Josh just shakes his head. Courteously, Tyler holds the door open for him and smiles as Josh shuts it, holding up a hand to wiggle his fingers in a parting. 

Does he lock it?

_Should_ he lock it?

Tyler said not to.

His fingers hover above the deadbolt, trace the chain of the lock above it. It makes a noise, a delicate little metal sound, and Josh cringes. He hasn’t heard the sound of retreating steps. Is Tyler standing on the other side of the door, holding his breath, waiting to know what Josh will do? He presses his eye against the peephole, lips pressed tightly together, lungs fit to burst. 

He sees nothing. 

Still, he can’t lock the door. 

So he goes into the bathroom instead. This door, he locks. And after he crawls into the tub, he draws the curtain closed for good measure. 

#

Sometime between one and two in the morning, he awakes curled up in the tub to the sound of someone banging on his front door. His neck aches, legs numb from being tucked up towards his body. He nearly rips down the shower curtain trying to make his way to the front door. He can’t look—is too afraid to see Debby there. 

Josh locks the door. The knocks stop. Someone shuffles away.

#

It is still early when Josh creeps out of his apartment, dirty work clothes tucked under his arm. The window at the end of the hall gives in a dim blue light, only the barest hint of morning. The entire floor is silent, 4B’s door closed, Bihn’s food and water dishes are gone, cleaned up for the night. 

Josh has never been so excited to go to work before. 

The basement laundry room is empty. The benches are in place, the washers and dryers standing silent. The closet with the community stash of detergent is wide open and empty of sleepers. There is no boogeyman hiding under the stairs. Because Josh checks. He fucking _checks_. Tossing his clothes into the washer, he dumps an indeterminate amount of detergent in and high tails it back up the stairs. He couldn’t be paid enough to wait around in that laundry room for his clothes to be finished. 

He sets a timer on his phone for a half-hour and does the dishes. He has to, to keep his sanity, the way people in fallout bunkers play board games, the way his mother spent the entire night before his grandfather’s funeral sitting at the dinner table clipping coupons from the newspaper: because if Josh doesn’t do something _normal_ , he might lose his mind. 

It’s while putting away the silverware that he sees the succulent sitting on the countertop. The sight of it makes him furious, a bull tempted by red. In his mind he can still see the way Tyler presented it to him, the full smile of softly crooked teeth, the warm squinting eyes. He grabs the tiny pot in a single hand and drops it into the trash.

And there is a piece of paper, folded, tucked underneath. It is flattened, creases pressed from the weight of the plant. He has no memory of it until he unfolds it. 

_MOVE OUT._

**Burn this.**

He’s weeping before he really even acknowledges why: 12D might not have moved out. Something might have happened to her. He thinks of her stomach, huge with a baby, and feels sick. Josh doesn’t even know what the gender was. He didn’t even think to ask her, and now she is Away, maybe just in another apartment building, but maybe somewhere much, much further. 

Darker. Like the dumpster.  

Josh sits beside the trash can, clutches the note to his chest and cries. He can barely see through his tears when another thought comes to him. He reaches into the trashcan and finds the succulent, resting on top of crumpled cans of RedBull and boxes of tv dinners and Starbucks coffee cups. He dumps the succulent on the floor, spreads the dirt thin with his hands—and there it is. A tiny little piece of technology, the size of a flash drive. 

A microphone. _Tyler bugged Josh’s apartment_. He closes the mic in his fist, squeezing, wishing he was strong enough to crush it to dust. His chest aches with sadness, impotence, absolute _fury_. He nearly smashes it under his shoe, sole hovering just above it. Then he breathes. He thinks. Josh scoops the dirt back into the pot, the succulent too with its shivering tendrils of roots drooping with dirt. He tucks the microphone back in. It resumes it’s spot on the counter top. Nothing in the room has changed, but it all looks different. But maybe it’s just Josh who is different. 

His phone buzzes in his pocket. It’s the alarm he set for the washing machine to let him know when to switch out the clothes. This time when he enters the hallway, it is bright with sun streaming through the eastern window. The hum of televisions behind closed doors is a comforting thrum.

The basement isn’t empty anymore. There are two Asian girls seated up on the washers. The younger has her legs tucked underneath her, dusty flip flops left down on the floor. They watch him come down the stairs, their jaws chomping on bubble gum. One dryer is on, turning endlessly: it’s rhythmic thumping is thrown off by whatever’s inside, and the unpredictability has Josh on edge. 

“Hey,” Josh mutters to them, approaching his washer which stands silent. 

The older girl pops her gum solemnly. She nods to the dryer. “That’s yours.” 

“Huh?” Josh asks. 

“The dryer. It’s yours.” 

Josh opens his washer—the girls must have put his clothes in the dryer for him, which is kind and uncalled for. But his clothes are still inside, damp. “No,” he says. “Sorry. This is my stuff.” 

“No—I’m _telling_ you. That’s yours.” 

Josh breaks out in a sweat, and he can’t say why. His heart is skipping beats now like the dryer is. He shuffles to it, scans the settings. DELICATE, it says. 

“Go ahead,” she says. “Open it.” 

He does. 

Inside is Bihn. The smell is bad: singed fur, cat urine, feces. The sight is worse: the little mangled body, the flattened ears, the turquoise collar on far too tight. 

“That’s from Tyler,” she says. Josh feels like he’s going to be sick. He turns away and gags, drooling on the floor while his eyes prickle with tears. The two girls watch on, faces empty. Their eyes are heavy, like they’re half-asleep. “He wanted us to let you know it was from him.” 

# 

_You said you wouldn’t hurt him_ , Josh texts Tyler. He can barely see the phone through his tears, teeth grinding in impotent fury until his jaw aches. _You said animals were innocent and that you’d never hurt them._

_Who is this?_ Tyler texts back. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rip bihn
> 
> Please leave a comment with praise, criticism, or weeping. All three will get you a BONUS. 
> 
> Find me on twitter and cry with me @ Spooky_Sad
> 
> Thanks to my patrons for all that they do <3


	5. Chapter 5

The next time Josh sees Tyler, he nearly kills him.

Josh wrenches open the basement door (he hates the basement, lets the laundry in his apartment pile up until he can’t avoid it anymore, until every outfit is stained and smells musty, until he has no clean underwear left). Tucked under his arms, he’s got a basket of clothes that have smelled far, far better days. Lost in his thoughts, adrenalin high from where he knows he’s going, the sound of his heart echoes in his ears sounds like _thwack, thwack, thwack_ , like a baseball coming down again and again—

And Tyler is standing directly on the other side of the door. Josh has a brief moment where the sight of the other man emblazons itself into his brain: the long lashes and dark surprised eyes, the stupid fucking red beanie, the mouth open in a gasp. Then Tyler jerks backwards, his hand which was reaching for the doorknob grasping nothing but air. The time it takes for him to fall down the entire flight of stairs is seconds, _less_ than seconds, but it seems like a lifetime. Josh is so startled that he drops the laundry and it tumbles down after the other man, raining dirty clothes down on Tyler’s form that lies crumpled and still at the bottom of the stairs.

“Jesus Christ,” Josh gasps, heart pounding. “Oh fuck. _Fuck_.”

Tyler is not moving. On instinct, Josh rushes down the stairs after him, taking them two at a time, slipping on a pair of filthy socks until he almost upends himself. At the bottom, he kneels down over Tyler who has blood matting the hair on his head, beanie lost somewhere on the fall.

“Jesus,” Josh mutters again, this time in relief. He doesn’t need to check if Tyler’s breathing—the sound is loud but ragged, eyes fluttering.

_I almost killed him_ , Josh thinks numbly.

Then he thinks it again, differently. _I’ve almost killed him…_

Tyler is evil. Josh knows that to be true, even if he never thought things like good and evil existed before he’d met the other man, before those terrible encounters in the basement. Any person who could hurt another person without batting an eye, who could hurt an innocent animal—the idea makes Josh sick. That’s the difference between them: a conscience.

And here Tyler is, vulnerable, hurt. Possibly very hurt, the pool of blood underneath the back of his head growing, the breaths becoming quicker, more shallow. Josh did not push Tyler down the stairs. But Josh could leave him here, at the bottom. It would be a service, he thinks. Like the man who bludgeoned Jeffrey Dahmer to death in a prison bathroom, like Seal Team Six when they killed Osama Bin Laden.

Standing over Tyler’s unconscious body, Josh doesn’t feel much like Seal Team Six. He feels scared, angry, shaking all over. He walks halfway up the stairs, smelling singed cat fur. Then he stops. Turns around and gathers all of his clothes, putting them back into the laundry basket. For a moment, Tyler’s eyes flutter open and he mutters under his breath: _mama_? He says, voice wet. Josh doesn’t say anything, and after another moment Tyler is out again.

_I’m going to leave him_ , Josh thinks. He tries to psyche himself up. This is _murder_. Even if it’s a service to the world, even if it will help him save Debby. It’s murder. He’s not Tyler, not fucked up enough to think any differently about it.

He’s not Tyler.

He’s _not_.

“Oh my fucking god,” Josh mutters, carrying the basket to a washer. He shoves the clothes in and starts it. “I’m going to fucking save him aren’t I?”

He has to go upstairs to get the cell reception to call 911. Then he calls Mr. Jefferson to let him know what happened. Then he opens the door for the paramedics when they arrive, leads them to the stairs where Tyler fell. He watches them work, sitting on top of his washer, feeling dull. Angry. Numb. _I should have let him die_ , he thinks, even as Tyler comes to consciousness again when they’re carrying him up the stairs on a stretcher, Mr. Jefferson watching over everything.

#

Tyler texts him later that night.

_Thnx for looking out for me. Can’t wait to make you regret it._ Afterwards are four heart emojis, and a kissing face—one he reserves for Debby. Josh squeezes his phone in his hand so tightly that it creaks.

He already does.

#

The Friday before Easter, Josh is eating a bowl of cornflakes at the island in his kitchen when a flyer is slipped underneath his unlocked door. HE IS RISEN! it proclaims. There’s going to be an Easter mixer on the roof—weather permitting, because the weather this spring has been tempestuous at best—with an egg hunt for the kids in the building. The neon paper crumples in his fists. When he opens the door (still crunching a mouthful of cereal), Tyler is already slipping one underneath Debby’s door. He’s dressed how Josh dresses for work: dress pants, a button-down shirt. His red beanie is nowhere to be seen, his hair is combed.

Tyler shrieks. His hand clutches at his heart, eyes—dark, so dark, _how are they so dark_ —wide from being startled. His whole body melts when he sees that it’s just Josh. The smile he gives is gentle, beatific.

They’ve run into each other a few times since Tyler’s fall. Sometimes, Tyler holds the door open for him when they are coming or going into the building at the same time. The other man spent a whole afternoon putting up a bulletin board on the main floor where occupants of the building could post things (business cards, flyers, the usual junk), and Josh had been forced to pass him several times that day. Sometimes, Tyler’s eyes on him make him feel like there’s a hand around his throat. Other times, Josh doesn’t feel anything at all. The nighttime activity around the apartment building has been nonexistent to Josh’s knowledge.

Maybe Tyler is on sabbatical while he recovers.

_You’re a murderer_ , he thinks numbly, glancing at the neon papers clutched in Tyler’s hand. Jesus’s figure on the cross, arms outspread, head lowered. HE IS RISEN.

“Hi,” says Tyler. “Good morning.”

Josh’s door is inches from closed on Tyler’s greeting when 4B’s door opens. Josh’s hackles rise at the sight of him: the weathered, rheumy eyes that maybe once were brown but maybe once were blue, the wispy white hair that circles his head like a wreath. He’s wearing a sweatshirt and pajama pants, thick woolen socks. His swollen knuckles clutch at the head of his cane when he raises it like he wants to strike Josh with it.

“You,” he says. “You keep an old man up at all hours of the night with all of your banging and you can’t even let him sleep in on the weekend?”

4B has turned out to be just another bane of Josh’s existence. He’s already received one official notice from Mr. Jefferson—that if Josh can’t play nice with old coot, Josh will be evicted. Their opinions on the parameters of playing nice could not be more different. It’s clear that people have been sucking 4B’s dick since he moved in ten years ago. Josh _hates_ sucking dick. Unless he wants to.

So far, he’s jumped through every flaming hoop this old bastard has made him jump through. He’s given up his parking space. He tiptoes around his apartment, cringing at every noise. He’s taken to watching Netflix on mute with the subtitles on—because 4B looks for every excuse to ring up Mr. Jefferson’s personal line and spin a tale about Josh’s latest disrespect.

If the murderous cult in the basement doesn’t drive Josh from the building, this asshole might.

“It wasn’t me,” says Josh. The smile on his place feel plastic. Jesus, he hates old people. Part of him hopes that he’ll never live to be so old. Considering where he lives, he thinks his wishes might come true. Josh points to Tyler standing further down the hall. “It was him.”

4B’s shifty eyes move past Josh’s figure and freeze on Tyler (who is giving an apologetic wave). The old man straightens up, hand trembling on his cane.

“Good morning, Seymour,” Tyler says.

Seymour’s answer is nonsense. He tries to backstep into his apartment and stumbles into the doorframe, taking a spill to the ground that has both of the younger men cringing. They help him up, shifting his arms over their shoulders. Tyler bends down to grab his cane where it clattered to the floor, rights it.

“Thank you,” the old man mutters like there’s a knife to his throat.

“I sure hope we see you at the party,” Tyler says.

“I’ll be there. I promise. Swear it.” The door shuts. It doesn’t lock.

“Do you two not get along?” Tyler whispers.

Josh shrugs. He tries not to speak to Tyler.

“ _Does he bother you?_ ” Tyler presses. The flyers slip from his fingers and scatter over the floor. He steps on them to come closer, eyes heavy and unblinking, totally and utterly fixated on Josh who feels like an animal caught in a predator’s gaze. “Some other people in the building have complained to me about him before. He’s been reprimanded. _Formally_.”

“This is the first time I’ve spoken to him,” Josh lies. “I have to go now.”

Tyler blinks, the spell broken. He bends down to pick up the flyers, gently smoothing away the creases. Even after Josh closes the door, he stays there, staring out the peephole, shaking. He doesn’t lock the door. He hates this place. _Hates_ it. The bowl of half-eaten cornflakes sits on his countertop turning to mush. It goes into the trash.

It’s a 600 square foot apartment but it feels like a five-by-five cell. Even with the windows open to let in the spring air, he feels strangled, throat tight with invisible hands wrapped around it. When he can’t take it anymore, he pulls on a jacket and leaves. Debby’s car is missing from the parking lot—she must be at work, like always. The thought of her makes him feel like the sun’s come out from behind a cloud. The walk into town turns his ears and nose pink from the chill but he can almost feel the warmth of a coffee cup clutched between his hands.

He forgets that last painful conversation between them, when Debby denied what happened in the basement with Tyler. They’ve spotted each other a few times while coming and going (and there have been a series of a half-dozen (alright, _maybe_ more) texts that have gone unanswered by her), but otherwise, it has been radio silence. Josh is ashamed of how easy it is to forget that they aren’t on good terms, because it seems like Debby is always mad at him for something or another.  The difference between them is that Debby can afford to ignore Josh—but Debby is all Josh has. When she cuts him off, it feels like he’s cut off from the entire world.

When he enters the coffee shop, he spots Debby behind the counter. Her expression is pleasant, and it’s easy to look at it and _feel_ it, feel like her crinkled nose and upturned lips and squinted eyes are for him and not just for the customers—

—and the guy working beside her. They’re elbow-to-elbow, and when he nudges against her to make her press the wrong button on the machine, she rolls her eyes and gives him this _look_. It’s just a look. But Josh knows, then. He sees her in his memories, out in the hallway outside his apartment, wearing boxers that aren’t his. He can put two and two together.

He almost makes it back out the door before she spots him. The happiness drains from her face almost as quickly as all the color, like he’s some kind of fucking murderer standing there in the entry with a mask over his face and a gun in his hand. He lets her go on her fifteen minute break, lets her make them coffee and sit at one of the tables furthest from the counter. But whenever he looks back towards the register, he sees The Other Guy there, watching them.

He feels like such a fool.

“Did I miss your text?” She asks. “You usually message before you come and visit.”

“Just—a spur of the moment thing,” Josh mutters. The coffee is sweet, how he likes it, but leaves a sour taste in his mouth. He says it without it being even true, though as soon as the words pass his lips, he knows he will make them true: “I’m looking for another apartment. I thought you should know.”

She’s shocked. Leans back in her chair, eyes wide. “Why?” She asks. “I thought you liked it there.”

“Don’t. Don’t pretend.” He feels so fucking brittle, like a rubber band pulled taught and ready to snap. “I can’t take that right now. You gaslighting me about what happened that night.  If you’ve got to lie about it, just don’t say anything.”

She doesn’t say anything.

“Everything okay here?” It’s the Other Guy, and up close, Josh can see that he absolutely stands a half dozen inches taller than Josh. _Tyler doesn’t need to be that tall to be scary,_ Josh thinks, though he has absolutely no fucking idea why the thought comes to mind.

“It’s fine,” Debby says. She waves him away.

“A friend of yours?” Josh asks.

“Coworker,” Debby insists.

“Right.”

“Look—I know I’m really bad with communicating. You’ve always been so much better at that than I have. When we were together, I used to think how backwards we felt. Like I was the—I don’t know—the stereotypical guy of the relationship. This is hard for me. Putting things into words. But—” She reaches out and takes his hand. Like in the movies. And her hands are cold, but he knows the saying. Cold hands, warm heart. “—you mean a lot to me Josh. You see something in me, you treat me differently. You hold me accountable for my bullshit. And I want us to be closer again. Like we used to be.

“I know I’ve been all over the place lately. I’m going through some stuff. I’ve actually been going back to therapy for it—”

“You’re seeing your therapist again?” Josh asks. He turns over his hand so they can lace their fingers together.

“You remember!” Her eyes are warm, like the coffee in front of him. “Yeah, I’ve been going again. I’m trying to work through my issues. I know it’s not my place to ask you, and I know you’ve got the right to say no, but I hope that you’ll be patient with me. I hope that you’ll _help me_ get through this.”

The moment last one heartbeat. Two heartbeats. Three. Josh is looking into her eyes and she is staring back, and people talk about seeing things, that eyes are the window to the soul or whatever, but he can’t fucking tell, he can’t fucking tell if that was a blatant cry for help regarding Tyler and the situation in the basement. But he thinks it _might_ be, and that thought—that scary, horrifying thought of leaving Debby alone to deal with this—it’s enough.

He squeezes her hand. “Invite me over tonight,” he asks, lowly.

“Come over,” she breathes.

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll stay.”

#

And he does. Through the rest of her shift at the coffee shop, too. He plays games on his phone in the corner, and Debby even goes into the employee lounge to grab her charger from her locker so that he can stay and wait for her to get off of work. The dynamic between Debby and her strapping male coworker seems to have changed. Josh tries not to waste more than a few glances on the Other Guy—Debby is taking _Josh_ home, isn’t she?

They buy two kitchen sink cookies and eat them on the way home, crumbs all over their laps. It’s the lightest he’s felt in weeks, since that dark night crouched on the basement stairs. They sing along to the radio together and Josh doesn’t even mind that his voice is no good. Not even pulling up into the parking lot can shake the smile from his lips, even if it does subdue him a little. Things might not be as bad, but they still are very, very dangerous. His next moves to get him and Debby free of this place will have to be carefully executed.

“Still coming up?” Debby asks. She leans over him to rifle through the glove compartment for a half-empty pack of cinnamon gum. Her hair brushes his thighs, and he can hardly breathe. Jesus, the things she does to him.

“Definitely,” he says.

She grins around her gum, but the smile is distracted. She’s looking out the windshield, squinting, craning her head just a little.

Josh follows her gaze just in time to see 4B jump off of the roof.

HE IS RISEN, Josh thinks distantly.

The fall is so, so long, and so, so short. Long enough for Debby to scream _(“Oh my God!”_ ), but not long enough for him to look away from the old man, arms outspread, falling through the air to land on one of the cars parked a few spaces away—and the sound, the _fucking_ sound he makes—there will not be enough time left in his miserable life to ever forget it.

And when Josh looks up, he _thinks_ he spots a figure on the roof, a glimpse of red ducking back away from the edge.

He is risen.

#

 

The aftermath is chaos: lights from police vehicles, ambulances, fire trunks fill the parking lot. There is a massive crowd of onlookers—people who’ve come out to stand behind the caution tape, people who are leaning on the rails of their balconies to watch the evening’s entertainment. Josh and Debby are in the middle of it, because they are the only eyewitnesses.

_Other than the one who pushed him_ , Josh thinks.

He doesn’t look at these people the same way. He was always raised to believe that police were the heroes, the protectors. But after what happened—the body, the dumpster—he knows that they are fallible. That against Tyler, they are ineffectual.

“You’re in his pocket, aren’t you?” Josh asks one. He can’t put the idea past them. Can’t put it past Tyler.

“Excuse me?” she says, pausing to look up at him from where she’s taking down his initial statement. Her pen hovers above the notepad. “What did you say? I missed that.”

Josh is a coward. He swallows. “Nothing.”

And it isn’t until they’ve moved the body and towed the car and Josh and Debby have both promised to come down to the police station later in the week to make formal statements that Tyler makes his appearance. Josh spots him standing among the crowd on the other side of the caution tape. The group has thinned out now, and Tyler stands out like a sore thumb.

He’s the only one crying. Weeping, even, tears soaking his windbreaker, eyes irritated and red as his beanie and the tip of his nose. “I don’t know why he’d do this,” Tyler say to one of the neighbors. “How could anyone do this?” The performance is Oscar worthy. _Better_ than the movies. It’s so good that Josh can’t see the cracks in it, so good that he almost believes that whatever he saw up there on the rooftop was just in his imagination.

It makes him question his fucking sanity.

That night he and Debby curl up in her bed and Debby cries into the junction between his head and shoulder, drenching his neck in tears that almost burn. In the morning she showers for so long that when Josh passes by the door, he can feel the heated steam seep from underneath. He thinks she might be crying, but when she comes out, her eyes are no worse for wear, uniform steamed smooth from being in the bathroom with her. Josh kisses her on the forehead, unsure of where they stand.

“Come over right after work?” he asks. “I’ll make dinner. Or we can order out.”

“Sounds great,” says Debby. She holds out her pinky for him to wrap his own around. “See you then.”

But Josh doesn’t see her. Not then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comment below! and find me on twitter @Spooky_Sad
> 
> Thanks to the people sticking with me. I know my update schedule is *blows raspberry*

**Author's Note:**

> This is going someplace dark, Idk. 
> 
> Thanks to my patrons adsnoggin, Alysha A., Angie M., Aphrodite, Bee, Kenzie, and Sam W. 
> 
> Find me one twitter @ Spooky_Sad


End file.
